She pushed him down at length, and with her hand on his collar went
into the other room. A solitary lamp burned dimly. She crossed to the
doorway and pulled aside the flap, and a small, white-clad figure rose
up before her.
"Is that you, Gaston?" she asked involuntarily, though she knew that
the question was unnecessary, for he always slept across the entrance
to the tent when the Sheik was away.
"A votre service, Madame."
For a few minutes she did not speak, and Gaston stood silent beside
her. She might have remembered that he was there. He never stirred far
beyond the sound of her voice whenever she was alone in the camp. He
was always waiting, unobtrusive, quick to carry out her requests, even
to anticipate them. With him standing beside her she thought of the
time when they had fought side by side--all difference in rank eclipsed
in their common danger. The servant had been merged into the man, and a
man who had the courage to do what he had attempted when he had faced
her at what had seemed the last moment with his revolver clenched in a
hand that had not shaken, a man at whose side and by whose hand she
would have been proud to die. They were men, these desert dwellers,
master and servants alike; men who endured, men who did things, inured
to hardships, imbued with magnificent courage, splendid healthy
animals. There was nothing effete or decadent about the men with whom
Ahmed Ben Hassan surrounded himself.
Diana had always liked Gaston; she had been touched by his unvarying
respectful attitude that had never by a single word or look conveyed
the impression that he was aware of her real position in his master's
camp. He treated her as if she were indeed what from the bottom of her
heart she wished she was. He was solicitous without being officious,
familiar with no trace of impertinence, He was Diana's first experience
of a class of servant that still lingers in France, a survival of
pre-Revolution days, who identify themselves entirely with the family
they serve, and in Gaston's case this interest in his master had been
strengthened by experiences shared and dangers faced which had bound
them together with a tie that could never be broken and had raised
their relations on to a higher plane than that of mere master and man.
Those relations had at first been a source of perpetual wonder to
Diana, brought up in the rigid atmosphere of her brother's
establishment, where Aubrey's egoism gave no opportunity for anything
but conventional service, and in their wanderings, where personal
servants had to be often changed. Even Stephens was, in Aubrey's eyes,
a mere machine.